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As “ fracking” for natural gas and oil
sweeps Ohio, the state should benefit from a windfall-profit tax and landowners should be protected
by a bill of rights, a liberal policy group recommended yesterday.

Innovation Ohio said it has not abandoned its environmental concerns about hydraulic fracturing,
or fracking, a method of mining natural gas and oil from underground Utica and Marcellus shale
deposits, which are abundant in Ohio.

But if the drilling is going to move ahead, as Gov. John Kasich and others want it to, the
income and jobs generated “should be shared fairly by all Ohioans” and not go down “a one-way
street in the direction of big oil,” Dale Butland of Innovation Ohio said at a news conference.

The policy group released a report urging state officials to have Ohio’s “severance tax,” which
is now levied mainly on coal extraction, apply also to natural gas and oil mining. Ohio’s tax rate
is now second-lowest in the nation to California. By increasing its severance to the same level as
Texas — 24th in the nation — Ohio would stand to gain $2.5 billion in new revenue in the next
decade, the group reported.

Innovation Ohio also recommended a landowner bill of rights, aimed at protecting property owners
who sell or lease mineral rights on their land to gas and oil companies.

Another proposal called for the state to enact a “hire Ohio” policy to guide more of what are
expected to be thousands of jobs in shale mining to Ohio residents. Many of the jobs are now
reportedly going to industry veterans from Louisiana and Texas.

Some of the policy group’s ideas are not dramatically different from Kasich’s. The Republican
governor recently suggested the industry should pay an “impact fee” to cover infrastructure damage
caused by oil and gas extraction. He also said he recommend an undisclosed increase in the
severance tax.

Next week, Kasich heads to Steubenville, Ohio, the heart of the state’s fracking frenzy, to
deliver his second State of the Speech.

Terry Fleming, executive director of the Ohio Petroleum Council, labeled the windfall profits
tax proposal as “an old, failed idea ... that could smother a growing industry and stifle the
economic growth and energy security that many predict if the exploration proceeds safely and
successfully.”